Horror Films

Yup, that’s Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (Wilson, 2004), undoubtedly the best of the sequels (well, that one’s a prequel but you know what I mean) although, as Ennioo says, none are on a par with the original movie. And, IMO, the original wasn’t exactly an all-time great; a decent enough way to spend ninety minutes but no more than that.

I wouldn’t mind catching the short-lived TV showhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327375/episodes?season=1&ref_=tt_eps_sn_1 at some point, though.

[quote=“scherpschutter, post:1096, topic:405”]Not the easiest Miiki movie to enjoy, but certainly worth watching for those who like their horror visceral and shocking:

[size=12pt]AUDITION[/size] (1999, Takeshi Miiki)[/quote]

Yeah, I can’t remember if I reviewed it here or not, but the film was more like an awkwardly baked cake. The ‘audition’ part felt like it belonged in another movie. Luckily the kid came in at the end, making it more like an overwrought crime-film.

Some minireviews of recent films I have seen:

Nightmare (1964)
Good film. Perhaps Freddie Francis’ best. Similar to another Black and White Hammer fiilm Scream of Fear in that it focuses more on drama and tension than outright scares. Moira Redmond puts forth a wonderful performance. Acting that good is a rarity in horror films.

Torture Garden (1967)
Another Francis film. I love these Amicus anthologies. Jack Palance serves up the biggest ham sandwich in the history of horror.

Uncle Silas (1947)
Based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic tale. More mystery thriller than horror but its another good film and very well acted with a very young Jean Simmons.

The Demon (1963)
The film that the Exorcist ripped off. Very low budget but very well done. Its ambigious whether the girl really was possessed or mentally ill. Daliah Lavi is amazing in this. She makes the film what it is. Mesmerizing. Lavi is definitely an unsung goddess of horror.

Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
Good Hammer film, only I’m not sure where they got the idea that a horde of bats can kill vampires.

Yotsuya Kaidan aka Illusion of Blood (1965)
Tatsuya Nakadai stars in this adaptation of the Oiwa story. Decent but definitely doesn’t touch Nakagawa’s masterful Ghost of Yotsuya (1959).

Jigoku
Finally got around to seeing this as I’m a big fan of Nakagawa. Great visuals and well acted but not exactly my cup of tea.

Four Horror Tales- Hidden Floor
Korean horror film with the same tired “girl ghost with long hair” theme. Not very original, nothing really sticks out, but decent enough for what it is.

Curse of the Crying Woman (1963)
My first foray into Mexican classic horror. The makeup job must have been shocking for audiences at the time. Not bad at all.

Black Pit of Dr. M (1959)
I didn’t really like this one as much, but contains good cinematography.

El Vampiro (1957)
I really liked this one. Good story and nice flowing plot. Carmen Montejo does a great job playing the evil aunt. Only a couple of flaws: The Vampires are extremely weak and don’t seem to be physically any stronger than humans, and Ariadna Welter is just about the most uninteresting female lead I have ever seen. Her character is simply there to whine and cry and be rescued.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow
Great TV movie. I really liked the simplicity of this. No blood or gore, just simple horror in the hickiest hick town.

The Skull
Another Freddie Francis film with Cushing. Decent film with nice set design and a psychological ecge with long stretches of time where this is not dialogue.

Babadook (2014)
Decent movie with the same old “Mother and child trapped in a haunted house” theme. Nothing very original here. Shining is an obvious influence, and so is the Ring films. The actual monster looks pretty awful but I really like the design of that popup book. The kid is very annoying for most of the movie.

I am the only one who likes found footage horror here? ::slight_smile:

btw I love Italian horror, Dario Argento is one of my top 10 favourite directors of all time.

[quote=“El Cangaceiro, post:1104, topic:405”]I am the only one who likes found footage horror here? ::slight_smile:

btw I love Italian horror, Dario Argento is one of my top 10 favourite directors of all time.[/quote]

It’s a trick I simply don’t care for.

I’m quite happy watching a found footage picture provided it’s done well. I don’t mind it being used purely as a stylistic device in a film/show that switches between first-person and more traditional third-person perspectives either (such as Modern Family, for instance). What I don’t like is when it’s utilised poorly. That is to say that if a movie is going to hang its entire premise on the found footage “documentary” nature of the photography, then it can’t cheat out of the clear blue sky and offer a camera angle or perspective not provided by the scripted AV sources, the story needs to have at least a half-decent justification for the protagonists to keep filming everything, and authenticity of the “footage” via the application of “amateur shaky-cam” shouldn’t come at the expense of being able to establish what is happening. Many found footage/first-person perspective/Cinéma vérité-style horrors fall down in that regard.

Welcome to the SWDB, by the way. :slight_smile:

[quote=“El Cangaceiro, post:1104, topic:405”]I am the only one who likes found footage horror here? ::slight_smile:

btw I love Italian horror, Dario Argento is one of my top 10 favourite directors of all time.[/quote]

Found footage is normally not my thing but I really like Noroi the Curse. That is found footage done right. Too bad there is no R1 release of that one. And yes I love Italian horror too.

There’s one I like, the father of the genre: Cannibal Holocaust.

I like Holocaust, but I loved the soundtrack.


[b]Annabelle/b John R. Leonetti

Should not have been this bad, but it was. I nearly fell asleep, really really boring and even the cheap scares were laughable and predictable. Terrible acting, especially by the lead actress…phffft!

I finally saw Noroi The Curse. A very good movie, and IMO probably the best “found footage” horror film I’ve seen. I didn’t find it as scary or chilling as I had expected, but I like the unique way it’s put together. The acting is very good and natural. Far better and creepier than American horror films, which over-emphasize cheap “startle” or “jump” scares, and loudly growling/roaring entities. The better Japanese horror films have superb atmosphere and yet are not overdone.

Sometimes less is better, and that’s certainly the case with many of the better horror films. IMO, exceptions to this are like the original Evil Dead films, purposely done over-the-top, yet still atmospheric and fun.

Have any of you gentlemen seen It Follows (Mitchell, 2014) yet? Getting a lot of attention as a horror that might just be the “real deal”…?

Looking forward to seeing this one. Looks remarkably good, hope it’s going to be as good as it appears to be.

[size=12pt]THE BRIDES OF DRACULA[/size] (1960, Terence Fisher)

The sequel to The Horror of Dracula (1958), the first Dracula movie produced by the famous British House of Horror, Hammer.

On her way to a girl’s school in Transylvania, a young French teacher (played by Yvonne Monlaur, who was indeed French) notices that all locals are afraid of something lurking in the woods, coming out late at night. When invited by an old lady to spend the night in her castle, she discovers that the old woman has imprisoned her own son. The seemingly helpless and polite young man is of course the evil incarnate, canine teeth and all, lusting for virginal blood. When liberated from his chains, all hell breaks loose.

Christopher Lee had refused to participate in any Dracula sequels (as we all know he would change his mind about this) so in this entry we’ll have to settle for a replacement killer Count, played by David Peel. Lee is sorely missed, but Peel isn’t bad at all and this is a good entry in the series, atmospheric and scary (and surprisingly gory for its time), featuring some of the loveliest vampires in history. And Von Helsing is played by the one and only Peter Cushing.

My first Hammer Dracula film and I still like it a lot; in fact, I must confess I probably prefer it to the original '58 Dracula, even without Lee. Wonderfully atmospheric, it’s one of Fisher’s best films (along with The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Devil Rides Out) and the climax, by way of Dryer, is a classic.

It Follows (2014)

I consider this the best new American horror film I’ve seen in years. For the most part, it gets away from the usual expected screaming entities, excessive bloodshed, over-reliance on cheap ‘jump’ scares, overdone CGI, and over-explaining what the entity is.

Basically, the story concerns an entity that is passed on from one person to another through the sex act. Then the entity, a type of shape-shifting incubus/succubus, begins stalking the latest victim. So long as this last person can avoid being killed, the entity will no longer stalk the one(s) who passed it on.

The movie was shot in Detroit. It’s hard for me to pinpoint the exact time period the movie takes place in. It seems like circa 1990s, but some things seem like current day. Not everyone will like this movie. It isn’t action-packed, and sometimes the pacing is slow. But I personally never felt bored. The movie is very character-based, and is, IMO, more thought-provoking than most current horror films, especially American ones.

I’m NOT really big into Todays horror. I’m more into the days when studios actually used to make movies on film. The pre-airbrush CGI world we live in today.
I usually enjoy action and horror stuff from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990’s. Here are some of the flicks I enjoy and are on Youtube:

SECRET OF THE BLACK WIDOW


SCREAM OF THE DEMON LOVER

THE SWEET SOUND OF DEATH

PHANTOM MADAM PEACH BLOSSOM

THE FORGER OF LONDON

THE EROTIC BRIDE FROM HELL

MAGIC OF THE UNIVERSE

THE INVISIBLE MAN IN MEXICO

THE BLACK ABBOT

GHOSTS GALORE

THE WHITE SPIDER

THE DEMON OF MOUNT OEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hvY-znpv5Y

NEUTRON VS THE AMAZING DR CARONTE

Good idea to give all the You tube links

I might give this bride from hell a try; if she’s really erotic, she’ll be worth the effort

Got another Youtube link for everyone and it is a killer movie…

Its called GHOST OF THE HUNCHBACK (from 1965)

[size=12pt]DRACULA A.D. 1972[/size]

I followed the fleet and watched a movie starring the master. Like the sequel, Satanic Rites of …, this one has a contemporary setting, London A.D. 1972. At the same time Lee and Cushing are re-united as the two arch enemies (for the first time since the original Hammer Dracula movie from 1958). While trying to reach new audiences, Hammer was obviously also trying to please fans of the first hour.

A pre-credit sequence, tells us that the ‘final’ encounter between the Evil Count and Dr. Van Helsing took place in Hyde Park, in 1872. One hundred years later, Dracula is brought back to life by a new disciple, a young student called Alucard (got it?). Most people call this a low-point of the series and true, it’s not a masterpiece. The problem is that this contemporary setting doesn’t really pay off. Dracula belongs in ‘some kind of Central Europe’, in ‘some kind of 17th or 18th Century’, not in 1970s London. Moreover Dracula is lusting for revenge rather than virginal blood, his main objective being the destruction of the Van Helsing family. Do vampires have human feelings (like holding a grudge?). I always saw Van Helsing as the obsessed person, not Dracula.

That said, the movie delivers some cheesy fun. This new disciple Alucard (played by Christopher Neame) is the kind of guy you’d like to kick in the ass every time he appears on screen. In other words: he’s a good disciple. The horror moments involving Dracula aren’t worse than in the other movies, and this scene in the bathroom is something special. Both Stephanie Beacham and Caroline Munro are breathtakingly beautiful and for those who care there are also some nice hotpants on display (the hippies look by the way more Sixties than Seventies, but who cares …)